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Nobody seems more surprised by who is fastest in Monaco so far than pacesetter Charles Leclerc himself, but there were plenty of interesting elements to Formula 1 Friday practice than just Ferrari's very strong day.
A lot more qualifying simulations than normal (because Saturday's so important here in Monaco), a few top drivers out of position, and some inevitable incidents with the walls, made for a fascinating first day of running in Monte Carlo.
And with the first clues coming for how an intriguing strategy battleground might play out, there is plenty that we've learned so far.
Where Ferrari's pace has come from
We came here being told by Ferrari, ‘don't expect anything from us here, we're not good in slow corners'. But we didn't believe them, and here they are: Leclerc has been fastest in both sessions, and in the second session he was followed very closely by team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
When Ferrari doesn't have the ride height complications from the big corner speed spread, like here where all the corners are about the same, its speed is right back in its sweet spot, right back where it was before the China disqualification forced a rethink.
We've got to be a little bit careful, because there's plenty of evidence here that Ferrari ran the session very aggressively, both in terms of how it was using the tyres and how much
engine mode it was running - probably to give the maximum stress to the tyres, because it's all going to be about pole. Leclerc, very much like he did in 2021, was insisting ‘forget everything else, let's just concentrate on getting pole'.
The McLaren is pretty much as fast. And I think if we mix in the usual Red Bull improvement from Friday to Saturday, we're looking at a three-team battle for pole position.
But Ferrari is right in the middle of that hunt. - Mark Hughes
Lawson has a much-needed edge
Racing Bulls managed to get two cars in the top six in FP2 despite Isack Hadjar hitting the wall twice.
Liam Lawson ended Friday as the quicker Racing Bulls driver for the first time this season, placing fifth, within half a second of pacesetter Leclerc.
Lawson needs a big weekend, having been routinely outperformed by Hadjar since his bruising demotion from Red Bull after the Chinese GP in March.
But the early Monaco signs are encouraging, given how quickly Lawson has got up to speed on a confidence track. A lack of confidence had played a part in his successive intra-team qualifying defeats.
Like Hadjar, Lawson is driving an F1 car around Monaco for the first time - though he raced here twice in Formula 2.
"It's better in an F1 car, honestly. I've done it in F2 before and although it's much faster in F1, it's just much more compliant, it's obviously a nicer car and it's really, really fun," Lawson said.
"So it's very special to be able to do this here, but obviously tomorrow is the important day so we'll focus on making another step for Q3 and trying to put ourselves in a good place for quali."
The fact that Hadjar was able to lap within a couple of hundredths of Lawson despite having crashed earlier in the session suggests this is far from a declaration that Lawson has any kind of edge on him this weekend.
But it's still certainly the most encouraging day of Lawson's difficult 2025 season so far. - Josh Suttill
Red Bull's midday misstep
It's not unusual to see both Red Bulls outgunned by the junior team on a Friday of a grand prix weekend, only for Red Bull to turn things around overnight and find itself in the fight for pole.
That Friday-Saturday swing scenario is what Red Bull is hoping for in Monaco with Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda 10th and 11th in FP2, seven tenths adrift of the Ferraris and over two tenths adrift of the Racing Bulls.
Even though Red Bull was adrift in FP2, FP1 started unusually brightly with Verstappen inside the top two there for the first time this season - but set-up changes in-between sessions backfired and left Red Bull further adrift.
"FP1 was quite positive, but then we made some changes for FP2 to see how far, basically, we could push the balance, and I think we just overdid it a little bit," Verstappen explained.
"I just couldn't really attack the corners anymore how I would like, and then you're just shedding a lot of pace, and that laptime is basically not coming out of it.
"I don't expect us to be the quickest, but we want to be, of course, a lot closer now [than] we were in FP2, but I'm also quite confident that we can be a lot closer."
Positively, Tsunoda's best effort was just 0.004s slower than Verstappen's despite having an older spec RB21.
He'll "try to squeeze out of myself" more time on Saturday as the pace inevitably ramps up, and Red Bull hopes to get back in amongst the lead group. - JS
Mercedes was just slow
"We weren't very quick today" was George Russell's to-the-point summary of how Mercedes went on Friday in Monaco.
The timesheets supported this, with Kimi Antonelli ninth and 0.647s off the pace while Russell was four places, and just under a tenth, further back.
"The car balance wasn't in the place that the drivers need it to extract a strong lap time," was trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin's verdict. That balance problem was costing time everywhere "but particularly in the slow speed".
Russell described it as "in terms of pure performance, probably our slowest Friday", but also pointed out that in 2024 Mercedes struggled on Friday in Monaco but was stronger on Saturday.
There's hope that improvements can be made overnight. Getting the tyres in the right window, and with the right front-to-rear balance, was part of the challenge, as was at times the need for a stronger front end.
Work going on overnight both with the data-crunching at the track and simulator work at the factory will decide whether Mercedes can hit back on Saturday. - Edd Straw
Piastri bailed himself out
The world championship leader came close to having a disastrous Friday. Instead Oscar Piastri ended it second-quickest, quicker than his title rival and McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, and with his confidence relatively intact.
There were two things Piastri did to ensure his red flag-inducing shunt at Ste Devote didn't derail his Friday and potentially the rest of his weekend.
First, he straightened up the steering just before ploughing into the barrier on the exit of the first corner - a seemingly innocuous correction, but one that probably prevented much more damage than just a broken front wing and nose.
Second, he used that reprieve to get the car back to the garage, collect his thoughts, and crack on with the rest of his session as if nothing happened. To end the day the quickest McLaren suggests he shrugged off any ill-effect of a potentially confidence-sapping shunt.
Piastri described it as "a very messy day" and a consequence of the car's usual trickiness to tease a fully committed lap out of it. A very rare accident was a symbol of all that, but Piastri bailed himself out of bigger consequences quite handily. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
The C6 isn't definitively faster here after all
The biggest question F1 teams wanted to answer on Friday was whether or not the softest C6 compound that Pirelli had brought to Monaco would be the nailed-on tyre for qualifying.
One week after it was the medium compound C5 that proved to be the wisest choice for grid spots at Imola, a repeat scenario would have triggered some major headaches on a mandatory two-stop weekend to ensure teams had enough sets of good rubber available.
But hopes of a definitive direction with the C6/C5 have been dashed. The decision over which tyre is best to go with appears to be on a knife edge – with only a 0.1/0.2s delta between the two softest tyres.
The C6 is continuing to offer a movement under cornering that some drivers do not like, but it does offer better peak grip. Drivers feel more comfortable to lean on the C5 – but to get it fired up needs a very hard out-lap and that may be difficult to achieve on the cramped Monaco streets.
Teams also need to be aware that burning through a medium could end up compromising strategies for Sunday if the C5 proves to be the best option to be on.
Based on what we know so far, the likelihood is of teams committing to the C6 in the early qualifying sessions – with perhaps someone rolling the dice on a late C5 effort in Q3. - Jon Noble
The early favourite to gamble
Based on a surprisingly harsh penalty dished out after FP2, it looks like we have an early favourite to gamble strategically on Sunday.
Ollie Bearman said on Thursday he had been exploring what extreme options there might be to do something different with the mandatory two-stop strategy in effect here.
However, that didn't include ‘get a 10-place grid penalty' - which Bearman's been slapped with for overtaking Carlos Sainz under red flags in practice.
Bearman will likely now have no choice but to roll the dice in the race. Haas didn't look stunningly quick in Friday practice so there's a strong likelihood that Bearman will line up last.
That means he'll surely have to get creative on Sunday. - SMM
Clues of mandatory two-stop impact
McLaren boss Andrea Stella spoke for many teams on Friday when he said that while a mandatory two-stopper had seemed quite a simple thing to execute when the idea first appeared, as the Monaco weekend has loomed there has been plenty more head scratching about how best to plot a path through it.
Despite there being some decent tyre data from Friday to know how the rubber will behave in the race, teams do not appear to be any nearer working out what will be the optimum way to handle the pitstop strategy.
What we know is that both the hard and the medium will last the full race distance if anyone commits to getting their two stops done early on (under a safety car for example), with some management required.
But there are too many variables in the mix right now – with teams not knowing where they are starting, how they can protect themselves from safety cars, and what the pace at the front of the race will be – to commit to anything for definite right now.
One new factor has entered the equation, however, and that is that the C6 soft tyre could be an option for some teams on Sunday.
It may not be able to last a super-long stint, but it could be jumped on to by some teams at the end of the race if they need a quick speed boost.
And one paddock member did not rule out some drivers starting on it – perhaps in the hope that an early red flag could force everyone else who started on the medium or the hard to lose a good set of tyres.
Shenanigans among teams to engineer a race-winning strategy may not get quite as extreme as Singapore 2008, but we could be in for a crazy afternoon. - JN
Colapinto needs a big step
Franco Colapinto's second Alpine outing started in subdued fashion, faster only than Lance Stroll, who only logged four laps, in FP1 then last and 0.874s off the back in FP2.
In his defence, it was a difficult day for Alpine, which proved slowest of the 10 cars. It also wasn't as bad as it looked for Colapinto, as although he was a second off his team-mate Pierre Gasly his fastest time was set on ageing softs and not representative of his pace with his afternoon disrupted by traffic and the red flag. Plus, on only his fourth day in the car, it was logical he would try and build up slowly.
"We've been just building up, going step by step," said Colapinto. "We've been getting better, the long run was stronger and was pretty good. I started to get the mileage and I started to build the confidence with the car again."
However, Colapinto didn't sound especially confident when talking through his day. That's unusual for such an ebullient character and indicates he knows he's got to make a good step tomorrow to deliver the kind of pace he's capable of. - ES
